TOULOUSE, France — French president Nicolas Sarkozy said Friday that the trauma suffered by France in the wake of the Toulouse shootings was “a little like” that experienced in the US following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“What must be understood is that the trauma of Montauban and Toulouse is profound for our country, a little — I don’t want to compare the horrors — a little like the trauma that followed in the United States and in New York after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks,” Sarkozy told Europe 1 radio.

He added, “We have some extremely precise questions to ask a certain number of people, and what happened this morning [Friday morning] will continue.”

Sarkozy’s comments came as police in France arrested 19 suspected Islamists in predawn raids, with most arrests made in the hometown of gunman Mohamed Merah, who shot dead three children and a teacher at a Jewish school. He also killed a paratrooper in Toulouse on March 11 and two more paratroopers in Montauban on March 15.

The arrests in Toulouse were “not directly linked” to the Merah investigation but were aimed at breaking up Islamist networks, a source told AFP. Some of the arrests targeted people in the western city of Nantes.

Police said they seized Kalashnikov rifles during the raids. Three of the 19 arrested were women.

Judicial sources said 17 of those arrested were being held for questioning. In France, suspects in terror-related cases can be held for up to four days without charge.

A senior police source told AFP that authorities had up to 100 suspected Islamist radicals in their sights, and Sarkozy said Friday’s operation was only the start.

The 23-year-old Merah was shot dead by a police sniper March 22 after a 32-hour siege at his apartment in Toulouse.

He was buried in Toulouse on Thursday under heavy police watch after Algeria — his family’s homeland — refused to accept his body on security grounds.

Authorities have charged Merah’s brother, Abdelkader, with complicity in the attacks and said they were looking for other accomplices.